A lengthy post on the Diablo III forums have a follow-up from Blizzard's Jay Wilson for his Facebook comment in reaction to comments by David Brevik where this developer on the original Diablo questioned some of the design choices made in Diablo III. He apologies to Brevik, saying he "deserves to be treated with greater respect," goes on to explain why he felt the need to defend his team, and concludes his message apologizing to the players in the community as well. In between he discusses the current state of the game, and the work they still have ahead of them to get it where they want it:

Part of the problem, however, is not just item drops, but the variety of things to do within the game. Many of you have stated that there needs to be more to the game than just the item hunt, and we agree completely. The Paragon system is a step in the right direction, giving meta-progress for your time in the game, but it does little to address the variety of activities you can do while playing. I don't think there’s a silver-bullet solution to this problem, but I do think we can make this aspect of the game better, and as such we're planning more than just PvP for the next major patch. Not trying to be coy, but we're still firming things up and will talk about this as soon as we can.

Difficulty has been a constant source of division when discussing the game. Some players believe Diablo has never been about crushing challenges, but more about efficiency and farming. Some players want a game that tests them to their limits. Neither player is wrong. As it stands, Diablo III simply does not provide the tools to allow players to scale the game challenge to something appropriate for them. We set Inferno as the high watermark and took a one-size-fits-all approach to game challenge. Later in the development of Diablo II, the 'players 8' command -- which let people set monster difficulty -- was added to address this issue, and we're considering something similar for the next major Diablo III patch to allow players to make up their own minds about how hard or how easy is right for them.

The Auction House has also proven to be a big challenge. It adds a lot of power for players to trade and acquire items. Getting a great Monk drop that you can trade for better gear for your Wizard is obviously a great benefit, but it does come with a downside. The Auction House can short circuit the natural pace of item drops, making the game feel less rewarding for some players. This is a problem we recognize. At this point we're not sure of the exact way to fix it, but we’re discussing it constantly, and we believe it's a problem we can overcome.

While these are some of the major issues with Diablo III, they aren't the only things we're looking at. On a daily basis we ask ourselves if the classes are satisfying to play, if rares and champions are fun to fight, if they’re tuned well relative to normal monsters. Can we make further improvements to social elements of the game? How can items be even better?

Bravik was completely right with what he said, and calling the bitch by its name.

Blizzard fucked D3 up to a sick extend, and that's that. It's like they shit that crap out in less than a year, ffs. They should be lucky that Bioware still vacuumed the air away for any truly proper flames toward Blizzard. After all... nothing in history could possibly suck more than Mass Effect's ending.

Wilson manned up and owned up to his classlessness, so credit to him. However, it doesn't change the fact in my mind David Brevik was spot-on his assessment of Diablo 3 and the design decisions Wilson and his team made in creating it.

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” - Mahatma Gandhi

Theo wrote on Aug 23, 2012, 05:57:Its not like taking cheap shots from the position of "look we did a better job" was a classy thing to say in public anyhow. David Brevik sounded like some kinda arnold rimmer in his post, not some games guru. He should take a long look at Max at runic for lessons on how to be classy.

I agree completely. Obviously Wilson put that facebook comment on there not realizing it was public, so I see nothing wrong with defending your team. If I worked with someone who left the company then bad mouthed what I worked on, I would say the same thing to my co-workers/team. Lesson learned I'm sure that everyone's facebook status isn't always private.

Hellgate's problems were more attributed to lack of central management and planning though. Most of the games ideas and systems were solid in principle, it just needed refinement and a real decision maker to iron things out. Plus I can respect Hellgate for at least doing something new, Diablo 3 really screwed the pooch on a golden formula that shouldn't have been difficult. Just even silly things that should have been obviously changed given the resources and time they had available, not to mention the experienced and superior management structure at Blizzard.

I get what you're saying, he took a cheap shot from a position of relative safety and there's some truth to that. On the other hand it has to sting a bit when people keep talking about how much they loved your old game but put out a poor imitation of it then actively resist the user base on fixing it (as they did for the first month). I can kinda see both sides of it.

WaltC wrote on Aug 23, 2012, 09:37:It's just too bad that Blizzard was able to use the name "Diablo III" in the first place, because that was the obvious driver behind the initial sales numbers, and for that Blizzard owes Brevik just about the whole enchilada; just about everything.

I don't think so, IIRC the original Diablo (prior to Blizzard) was a turn based game. Basically, left alone, there never would have been a Diablo in the sense that we know it today. So Blizzard hardly owes him 'the whole enchilada'. Not to mention pretending that Brevik always knows how to do it right and Blizzard doesn't seems to forget Hellgate.

shinchan0s wrote on Aug 22, 2012, 21:19:He's like the director of the Total Recall remake - putting his own "vision" on an already pretty great thing which turns out to be doing the exact opposite of what made the original so great. Where do they find these guys?

I actually liked that remake better than the original. All Schwarzenegger movies are pretty much the same :p

Yakubs wrote on Aug 23, 2012, 10:12:Jay Wilson is a clown. If I had any faith in Blizzard anymore, I'd hope that their management would realize just how much damage he's done over the long term. But I don't.

I agree, if Blizz wants to save face in any way then need to fire this ass hat.

I got back on to see the new changes, was running around with my brother and we went thru Act 3 Inferno last night. for the most part the new fixes seem to be working, but Cham and Elite fights are still pretty hard, not as bad as before but still hard. Being mobbed by an Elite pack that spawns in more elites is utterly stupid. Even with the equipment i have we died many times until we finally killed them.

Heres my profile, as you can see I have some decent gear. I tanked this with my monk while my brothers wiz did most of the dps. My Stormshield kept me going. Never discount this Shield. It’s absolutely a beast.

wtf_man wrote on Aug 23, 2012, 09:21:I laugh at all you Bastids that supported "always online DRM".

You deserve a shitty game for your money, and I hope they fuck it up even more.

Are you drunk or just parodying another poster?

Paragon leveling times

Feast your eyes on this. The time it takes to level one characters paragon fully is the equivalent to leveling 445 characters to level 60. I'm not sure whether to be worried or impressed but there is no doubt that this will kill some unfortunate gold farmer

It's just too bad that Blizzard was able to use the name "Diablo III" in the first place, because that was the obvious driver behind the initial sales numbers, and for that Blizzard owes Brevik just about the whole enchilada; just about everything. It's obvious that the developers at Blizzard these days are egotistical shadows of original Diablo developers--get a load of those comments? Good grief, they sound like spoiled brats denied candy bars.

What Blizzard developers should have said is something more along the lines of, "Hey, if it wasn't for Brevik we wouldn't have this franchise to develop, and the earlier Diablo games were such smash successes that this one wouldn't have been possible in their absence. We need to consult with Brevik and get his input on how we can improve things still further."

Between the lines: The developers of Diablo III missed the boat with the game because they never understood the first Diablo games, especially Diablo 2. Loot? The game was about a hell of a lot more than loot. It was fun it was single-player and it was by turns both scary and exhilarating. It had just tons of atmosphere that was utterly unique to anything that had gone before. Did I mention how much fun it was in single player? There was no condescension to MMO mediocrity, there were no cheap, unworkable gimmicks like mob-based "loot auction houses" and so on. Because Diablo II completely lacked the core of Diablo III, it was very successful.

Blizzard could have done a hell of a lot better with this game if it had worried a lot more about game play than it worried about piracy, in the process ensuring a great title that would have sold extremely well no matter what. Bottom line is that if a game design will help frustrate pirates but alienates players while doing so it's a poor game design. The developers of Diablo III need to go back to school and let the developers of Diablo II show them how it's done. Diablo III was a cheap spin-off shadow of Diablo II, and looks and plays accordingly.

It is well known that I do not make mistakes--so if you should happen across a mistake in anything I have written, be assured that I did not write it!

InBlack wrote on Aug 23, 2012, 05:04:I disagree. Both Starship Troopers and Total Recall (the old one) worked well as movies, although not so much as book adaptations. As someone who read the books I can say that on their own they are quite entertaining hollywood action flicks. Much better than any SF produced in Hollywood in the last ten years in any case.

Im much more interested in the movie adaptation of Haldeman's "The Forever War". Apparently Ridley Scott has the rights for the film adaptation, but considering how badly the script for Prometheus turned out to be its a long shot...

District 9 for starters.

Let me get this straight your saying its ok that the movies were NOTHING like the books and now your saying you hope the script for your favorite book holds your interest?

District 9 while a great SciFi flick, wasnt produced in Hollywood. Its a South African film, written and directed by a South African filmaker. Apart from an american firm distributing it, Hollywood had very little to do with this movie.

Saying that these films were NOTHING like the books is an extreme overstatement.

But other than that yes, you got it straight but Im not sure you understood. While the base material for the movie might be fucking awesome, that doesnt necessarily guarantee that it will be well adapted or even if its true to the original it doesnt mean it will make a good film.

The script, dialogue and writing for Prometheus was attrocious even though the underlying story in the film was quite good, which is why Im concerned about 'Forever War'.

Luke wrote on Aug 23, 2012, 06:43:It sounds like a post released on a beta forum for the beta tester (current state of the game post)We know this is wrong , we know that is wrong.

The Auction House can short circuit the natural pace of item drops, making the game feel less rewarding for some players. This is a problem we recognize. At this point we're not sure of the exact way to fix it, but we’re discussing it constantly, and we believe it's a problem we can overcome

Well get that pos out of the game were is the problem?

They will never get rid of it and I don't think they should, the % the get from the sells are what drive them and these farmers are making pretty good $$$ from it right now. Instead they will just constantly juggle around broken mechanics with no real content until both sides(Farmers & Casual Players) are happy.

It sounds like a post released on a beta forum for the beta tester (current state of the game post)We know this is wrong , we know that is wrong.

The Auction House can short circuit the natural pace of item drops, making the game feel less rewarding for some players. This is a problem we recognize. At this point we're not sure of the exact way to fix it, but we’re discussing it constantly, and we believe it's a problem we can overcome

Whilst i think Jays a bit of a pillock in the general for some of his design choices (like the current skill choice UI, there was fucking nothing wrong with the one they had earlier in beta and it was at least consistent with the rest of the fucking UI); i don't think he had any reason to appologise really.

Its not like taking cheap shots from the position of "look we did a better job" was a classy thing to say in public anyhow. David Brevik sounded like some kinda arnold rimmer in his post, not some games guru. He should take a long look at Max at runic for lessons on how to be classy.

Everyone on Bluesnews is synical, get over it. edit: i cant spell, this is my disclaimer.

InBlack wrote on Aug 23, 2012, 05:04:I disagree. Both Starship Troopers and Total Recall (the old one) worked well as movies, although not so much as book adaptations. As someone who read the books I can say that on their own they are quite entertaining hollywood action flicks. Much better than any SF produced in Hollywood in the last ten years in any case.

Im much more interested in the movie adaptation of Haldeman's "The Forever War". Apparently Ridley Scott has the rights for the film adaptation, but considering how badly the script for Prometheus turned out to be its a long shot...

District 9 for starters.

Let me get this straight your saying its ok that the movies were NOTHING like the books and now your saying you hope the script for your favorite book holds your interest?

I enjoyed D3 while I was still interested in it, if that makes sense. But then one day I didn't feel like playing anymore at all and haven't played since. I did like a few things that they did, like how easy it was to join up with friends... But they missed the whole boat with the main point of the game. There's no point to keep playing as you never find anything good. I got to level 59 with my main and 30s with another. I only found 2 legendary items that sucked. All of my good gear that I had I got off of the AH